They printed twenty thousand copies when I wrote it, and I gave Morrie all the money and just said, “Pay off your bills.” It was a labor of love. They printed twenty thousand more copies the following August. Now, worldwide, it has sold sixteen or seventeen million copies.

Note:Yes Mitch, clearly your book success is relevent to the history of ESPN.

Even the most charmed life is a veritable travelogue of disappointment. There will always be an inevitable gulf between hope and reality. It is how we traverse these Deserts of Letdown that shows us what we are made of (perhaps almost as much as does choosing to characterize them as Deserts of Letdown).